Declining numbers of female births in India

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It appears for socio-culural reasons, many Indians find the idea of having girl babies unpalatable and these foetuses are being destroyed before birth by abortion.

Now I know abortion is a hot topic, especially in the US, and I admit being a well meaning Guardian reader, I'm pro-choice - but I find this practice abhorrent - and extremely short sighted as eventually, there will be a shortage of women for men to marry.

I've never been to India, so I'm speaking from my limited experiences with Indian people here, but it seems they have strong family groups and pregnant women seem under pressure from the families to terminate girl foetuses even though it's supposed to be illegal to do so.

The whole idea of such practice makes me want to vomit and to become even more strongly feminist. Men and women are equal in a balanced society, anything else is a social timebomb.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13264301

Angharad.

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Population

The two most populous countries in the world and they play the same game. The result has been kidnapping of young girls for 'marriage', infanticide, rape, the list could go on.

I put inverted commas around the m-word because as a helpless romantic I tend to think there should be an element of choice on both sides, otherwise it is just legalised rape.

Ang, I am a feminist (though not a man-hater), and every now and again I am reminded why. I just wish the reminders weren't so bleak.

This is incredibly dangerous

for the whole world not just the counties involved. We talk about coming water wars, what about coming women wars?

Surplus of males

It is a terribly serious problem over many other countries particularly China where there are estimated to be well over 100 million excess males,

It was even the justification for one of my stories ... although I can't tell you which as it might spoil the end. :)

Fleurie

Fleurie

I'll admit that I'm very

I'll admit that I'm very strongly pro-choice, but there's a gigantic difference between 'unable to care for' or 'medical complications', or even 'cannot afford', and "I want to have sons, so my wife will have to simply deal with that".

I have a hard time believing that the _women_ want sons over daughters.

idiots. If anything, it's more natural for the human race to end up with more females than males. More males than females leads to actions that will reduce the number of males to match the number of available mates.


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

It has been determined

Thant when a female partner sees the male as a winner they are more likely to have two sons and then a daughter and if they do not think quite so highly of their partner two sons and a daughter. The pattern is repeated across all cultures. Evolutionary thing.

The theory for this is that it is because in primitive times women will reproduce whether the want to or not but males will have more children if they are successful.

Pattern

Your two patterns are the same.

Frightening! Politics and philosophy aside,

Andrea Lena's picture

...between the official "One Child" policy and the tacit cultural anti-woman attitude, China is the biggest purveyor of gynocide. And India isn't far behind. It's ironic that in some countries, it's almost acceptable practice to routinely offer abortion as the 'first' choice to a pregnant woman, which becomes almost no choice at all for women in the long term, since an astonishingly greater number of females are aborted than males each day, making it the biggest misogynistic hate-crime in the world. Add to that the potential for doing the same to 'future' homosexuals, inter-sexed and transgendered fetuses that might be identified by genetic research and testing, and the devastation would be global and catastrophic, since those labels still apply to some whom many consider as being as abnormal or 'damaged' as children with Downe's Syndrome or Cerebral Palsy; and who decides what is abnormal or abhorrent anyway? Please understand that I am not advocating for or against anything; just trying to be informative.


Dio vi benedica tutti
Con grande amore e di affetto
Andrea Lena

  

To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
Love, Andrea Lena

'Choice'

I am reminded of an SF story where the list of undesirable attributes to be filtered out includes being left-handed. Once you start 'filtering', where do you stop?

As there are very few FTMs on this site, I am sure we are biased

Frank's picture

Of course I'm also a feminist, I think I have been even as a child. I was lucky that when I grew up my schools were integrated so I never LEARNED to think less of other races or girls for that matter.
I've always believed in the "my body my right" idea. I understand the Patriarchy cultures go back centuries and even some major religions still practice it in the most Orthodox/Stringent sects. What I can't wrap my head around is the idea of WANTING a child or children, and aborting your own because it isn't a certain kind of child. I say it this was because if it can happen one way, there could be a time where the reverse is also true.

I'm pro-choice for the mother's circumstances in life, not as a form of 'selection' of baby attributes.

Hugs

Frank

Yep, this is so sick

And it would be just one of many reasons why I have had a change of heart in my approach to religion.

Gwen

Religion?

I am involved in a discussion about this on another site, and one thing that has been brought up is the concept of the dowry, where, effectively, a man is paid to marry a daughter. Daughters are net costs, sons generate income. Cultural rather than purely religious.

There was also the reverse

There was also the reverse in some societies, where you had to prove that you could provide for the female in question (and defend her), by 'buying' her off of the family.


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

It Blows Your Mind

jengrl's picture

PICT0013_1_0.jpg to know that even the educated classes like researchers and doctors there, know that men are the ones responsible for determining the sex of babies, but they still allow this blatant travesty to go on. I read an article that talked about the despicable things that go on there. Even when female babies are allowed to be born, they are starved to death and denied medical care until they die. Mothers have been conditioned to resent their female children when they are born. Many villages in India have such a shortage of women that Human trafficking is taking place where women from other villages are sold to men in villages that have a shortage. It is long past time that the U.N Commission on Human Rights gets involved with this and puts a stop to this by educating these people about the truth of DNA and sex chromosomes. This has gone on long enough! These people apparently don't understand the concept of zero population growth, but they will unless they change their totally ignorant ways!

PICT0013_1_0.jpg

What's New Here?

What's New Here? Yes, it is sick and upsetting, but what is new? It's the same story regurgitated about every ten years or so. They have been doing it for as long as they could determine the babies sex and unfortunately will continue doing so. It's ACCEPTABLE if you just don't want THIS baby but is TOTALLY unacceptable if you ONLY don't want a girl, or a homosexual, or a transgender baby.

Huggles ALL

Chelle_MM

In the words of Margaret Sanger the Founder of Planned Parenthood:
"We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population," she said, "if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America, by Linda Gordon

Declining numbers of female births in India

Well, without enough girs, the boys will trounce one another for the privilege of having a girl. All too much like the cave man.

    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine
    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine

India, Pakistan, China

INDIA-- Wikipedia
According to a recent report by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) up to 50 million girls and women are missing in India's population as a result of systematic sex discrimination. The UNICEF study has been criticized by the Indian Medical Association for utilizing outdated data and for deliberately demonizing Indians for the purposes of politics[90][91]

NOT NEW Centuries old problem

Huggles
Chelle_MM

And who are doing

Angharad's picture

the scans and abortions but members of the Indian Medical Association?

India is massively corrupt, why are we surprised at such things - because they are disgraceful and if people don't object nothing will ever be done. The first step in objecting is information - I'm doing that bit here.

Angharad

Angharad

Huh? Genocide of an astronomic proportion...

Andrea Lena's picture

...both before and after birth with the killing of female fetuses and the abandonment and/or outright killing of newborn girls but hell, as long as the boys have someone to date? Not enough 'girls to go around?' Barbarism, not a caveman mentality, that serves no other purpose but to raise one kind of human at the expense of another? And outrage comes only if certain humans are killed but not others? From my perspective, selective outrage only serves to perpetuate the hardness of heart that fosters a Dagon mentality in the first place.


Dio vi benedica tutti
Con grande amore e di affetto
Andrea Lena

  

To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
Love, Andrea Lena